# Wrecking yard

A wrecking yard (Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian English), scrapyard (Irish, British and New Zealand English) or junkyard (American English) is the location of a business in dismantling where wrecked or decommissioned vehicles are brought, their usable parts are sold for use in operating vehicles, while the unusable metal parts, known as scrap metal parts, are sold to metal-recycling companies. Other terms include wreck yard, wrecker's yard, salvage yard, breaker's yard, dismantler and scrapheap. In the United Kingdom, car salvage yards are known as car breakers, while motorcycle salvage yards are known as bike breakers. In Australia, they are often referred to as wreckers.

## Types of wreck yards

The most common type of wreck yards are automobile wreck yards, but junkyards for motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, buses, small airplanes and boats or trains exist too.

## Scrapyard

A scrapyard is a recycling center that buys and sells scrap metal. Scrapyards are effectively a scrap metal brokerage. They typically buy any base metal. For example, iron, steel, stainless steel, brass, copper, aluminum, zinc, nickel, and lead would all be found at a modern-day scrapyard. Scrapyards will often buy electronics, appliances, and metal vehicles. Scrapyards will sell their accumulations of metals either to refineries or larger scrap brokers. Metal theft is committed so thieves can sell stolen copper or other stolen valuable metals to scrapyards.

## Operation

When an automobile is severely damaged, has malfunctioned beyond repair, or is not worth the repair, the owner may sell it to a junkyard. In some cases, when the car has become disabled in a place where derelict cars are not allowed to be left, the car owner will pay the wrecker to haul the car away. Salvage yards also buy most of the wrecked, derelict, and abandoned vehicles that are sold at auction from police impound storage lots, and often buy vehicles from insurance tow yards as well.
A salvage yard offering car removal services, allowing individuals to dispose of their old, non-functional vehicles responsibly, will usually tow the vehicle from the location of its purchase to the yard, but vehicles can be driven in. At the salvage yard, the automobiles are typically arranged in rows, often stacked on top of one another. Some yards keep inventories in their offices, listing the usable parts in each car, as well as the car's location in the yard. Many yards have computerized inventory systems. About 75% of a vehicle can be recycled and used for other purposes.
It is becoming increasingly common to use satellite part finder services to contact a number of salvage yards from a single source. In the 20th century, they were call centres that charged a premium rate for calls and compiled a facsimile that was sent to various salvage yards so they could respond directly if the part was in stock. Many of these are now Web-based with requests for parts being e-mailed instantly.
Often parts for which there is high demand are removed from cars and brought to the salvage yard's warehouse, so a customer who asks for a specific part can obtain it immediately, without having to wait for the salvage yard employees to remove that part. Some salvage yards expect customers to remove the part themselves (known as "self-service yards"), or allow that to be done at a substantially reduced price compared to having the junkyard's staff remove it. That style of the yard is often referred to as a "You Pull It" yard.
However, it is more common for a customer to call in and inquire whether the specific item they need is available. If the yard has the requested item, the customer is usually instructed to leave a deposit and to come to pick up the part at a later time. The part is usually installed by the customer or agent ("the customer's mechanic"), but some salvage yards also provide installation services.
The parts usually dismantled from vehicles are generally any that can be resold, such as the light assemblies (commonly known as just "lights", e.g. headlights, blinkers, taillights), seats, parts of the exhaust system, mirrors or hubcaps. Late-model vehicles will often have entire halves or portions of the body removed and stored on shelves as inventory. Other major parts such as the engine and transmission are often removed and sold, usually to auto-parts companies that will rebuild the part and resell it with a warranty, or will sell the components as-is in used condition, either with or without warranty. Other, usually very large, junkyards will rebuild and sell such parts themselves. Unbroken windshields and windows may also be removed intact and resold to car owners needing replacements. Some salvage yards will sell damaged or wrecked, but repairable vehicles to amateur car builders, or older vehicles to collectors, who will restore ("rebuild") the car for their own use or for entertainment, or sometimes for resale. Those people are known as "rebuilders".
Once vehicles in a wrecking yard do not have more usable parts, the hulks are usually sold to a scrap-metal processor, who will usually crush the bodies on-site at the yard's premises using a mobile baling press, shredder, or flattener, with final disposal occurring within a hammer mill, which smashes the vehicle remains into fist-sized chunks. The chunks are then sold by the ton for further processing and recycling.

## Gallery

* Former British Rail locomotives awaiting disposal at the now-closed Swindon Works, England, 1985
* Former Pacific Electric Railway streetcars stacked at a junkyard awaiting destruction in the US, March 1956
* London Underground A Stock subway cars wait to be scrapped at CF Booth, Rotherham, England
* A car dismantling yard in Grimsby, England
* A pile of scrap vehicles
* Rows of scrap cars
* Scrapped cars and other metal scrap in Oulu, Finland
* Former British Rail diesel locomotives stacked at Vic Berry, Leicester in October 1987
* Truck loaded with scrap car bodies
* Stored wrecked cars